Portable processing devices are increasingly being used to permit a physician to access and search current patient record information at the point of care. Ideally, a portable device, such as a palmtop computer, has a display large enough to easily view a patient record yet small enough to facilitate portability. However, available portable systems for processing patient record information are limited in their capabilities for securely acquiring, accessing, transferring and updating patient record information and in their capabilities for creating and navigating image menus supporting the location and access of desired patient record data by a user. Specifically, available portable systems are limited in their capabilities for collecting and processing patient data at the point of care and in transferring the collected data to a remote system such as a patient record management system. Typically hospital personnel use a data collection form to acquire patient data such as blood pressure, pulse, vital signs etc. However, the data collection requirements of hospitals and other healthcare providers (including, clinics, physicians, group practices, care facilities etc.) differ. It is desirable to provide a portable processing system accommodating different forms for use by different hospitals and for collection of different types of data. It is further desirable that such a system supports management and transfer of forms and associated collected data as well as ancillary information within a network hosting portable processing devices. A system according to invention principles addresses these requirements and associated problems.